"Indulgence II," by Williamsburg artist Nicole McCormick Santiago, is one of the works on view in her solo show at This Century Gallery in Williamsburg.

Courtesy of the artist

Courtesy of the artist

Any time you stumble across paintings as lush and full of texture as those of Nicole McCormick Santiago, knowing where to start isn't the problem.

Instead it's figuring out where to stop.

Her vibrant palette usually offers a good beginning — and her lively handling of paint certainly pushes you along. Then there's the seamless, deceptively effortless way she weaves elements of the still life, interior painting and portrait together into a rich and multi-layered visual statement.

Adding still more to these eye-tickling attractions is the College of William and Mary artist's distinctive bent for storytelling.

Though drawn from the quiet, seemingly unpromising pages of domestic life, the mysteries and dramas she conjures up have a weight and reach that make them surprisingly compelling — especially when compared to the crowd of realist works that are all about exercising the eyes rather than probing the mind and heart.

Just take a look at "Offering," one of nearly 20 related paintings on view through June 1 in Santiago's small yet rewarding solo show at This Century Gallery in Williamsburg.

Instead of merely recording the moment when a birthday cake enters a room, she focuses on a disheveled young mother holding an improbably tall, 3-tier cake high in the air as she pauses in mid-step, balances the cake with one hand and holds a door ajar with the other — all the while dodging a barrage of flying balloons.

Tight framing blocks out the rest of this typical but not so ordinary anniversary scene, underscoring the role of the plainly clad woman charged with delivering the centerpiece of the celebration. And there's no mistaking how much her taut, tension-filled calves and running shoes reveal about the pains taken — and the obstacles navigated past — as this unlikely heroine carries out her endeavor.

Similar insights can be found in Santiago's unexpectedly complex "Birthday Scene," which unfolds to offer layer after layer of observations on the relentless passage of time and the often bewildering transition from child to adult.

If the young woman shown here looking up from a doll to a birthday cake seems baffled, it's because she is — as is anyone trying to juggle the frequently unwieldy memories and impulses of the past with the changing demands of the present and the future.

Such puzzling moments of transition and adjustment crop up frequently in Santiago's paintings.

But rarely do you get the chance to see them as fully and repeatedly explored as in her engaging "Indulgence" series.

Part portrait, part still life and part pattern-filled character study, each of these paintings gazes down upon a curious kind of picnic scene from overhead, making you feel a little disoriented from the beginning. The images turn their solitary reclining female subjects upside down or at least sideways, too, adding to the sense that these violet-clad young women have fallen into a brightly colored, vividly patterned kind of Wonderland.

White polka dots drifting across a red blanket intensify this mildly dizzying sensation, as does the rhythmic assortment of colorful cakes, plastic cups and paper plates strewn with artistic randomness across the fabric. Yet as mesmerizing as all these eye-grabbing visual elements can be, they aptly reflect the Alicelike state of Santiago's women, who stare off into space as they'd been stunned by their surroundings.

Toppled cups, dropped forks and half-eaten slices of cake combine with wildly spiraling lollipops and whirling frosting to suggest some small indulgence as the cause of these reveries. But exactly what happened is left tantalizingly undetermined.

Only in "Baby Cakes," which swaps out the young women in party dresses for a clearly pregnant mom-to-be, do we get any kind of clue about the cause of these trances. Yet even here, the expression on her face as she caresses her swelling abdomen holds much more mystery than answers.

Don't miss the series of small still lifes in which Santiago's lavishly painted cakes strut like stars rather than supporting actors.

They're remarkable works of art in their own right — and clearly determined to be delicious.

Erickson can be reached at merickson@dailypress.com and 757-247-4783. Find him at dailypress.com/dpentertainment and Facebook.com/dpentertainment.

In her new solo show at This Century Gallery in Williamsburg, College of William and Mary artist Nicole McCormick Santiago offers an engaging series of narrative paintings that tell unexpectedly rich stories with a lavish brush. The exhibit runs through June 1. -- Mark St. John Erickson